“I think I'm dying.”
“Oh, you think you're dying every time you stub your toe. Remember when you were twelve and you had the flu? I've pulled you through worse scrapes than this, young man. Now get up here and untie me.”
“You're safe now,” Irene said soothingly, though she had to wonder whether any of them, including herself, could ever feel truly safe again. At the moment, she understood, they were all suffering from acute stress disorder, a precursor of post-traumatic stress disorder that included all the PTSD symptoms, plus severe dissociative symptoms like selective amnesia, affective numbing, and derealization. But Irene shrugged off her own problems- not only was she the least affected of the three, she was a psychiatrist, for crying out loud. “It's over-you're free. He can't hurt you anymore.”
She kept repeating variations on that theme as she helped Donna Hughes to her feet, helped her get her arms through the sleeves of an orange blouse, steadied her while she stepped into a pair of shorts, helped her up the steps and out into the moonlit meadow. A moment later Pender emerged from the hatch with Dolores Moon in his arms, still clutching her blanket around her, unwilling to give it up though Irene had brought her a selection of what appeared to be her own clothes, judging by the sizes.
Irene herself had changed back into the cranberry cardigan, short-sleeved blouse, and white ducks she'd worn-was it only that morning? Time had ceased to have much meaning-she recognized that as a dissociative symptom.
Pender eased little Dolores onto her feet and put his arm around her to steady her. She leaned against him, and with his help turned a full hundred and eighty degrees, turning her back to the two-horned peak to the west, facing the house at the edge of the meadow, and behind it, the full moon rising over the forested ridge.
“Isn't that something?” she said.
Pender looked down at her, then up at the moon. Next to him, Irene and Donna were supporting each other, their arms around each other's waists.
“It sure is,” he agreed. He might have been suffering from a touch of acute stress disorder himself-he couldn't access his emotions, they were too big and too deep. It was as if he'd never seen that full moon before, as if he'd landed on a planet with a whole different sky.
A lesser man, a singular man, would never even have made it into the barn, much less dragged himself all the way to the foot of the loft essentially one-armed and one-legged, and nearly bled out. It required the cooperation of all the alters except Lyssy, and the autistic Mose. Each of them took a turn, then slipped back into the darkness. In the end only blind Peter was left to drag the body the last few feet.
“Where's the ladder?” he called-up until then he'd known only the terrain of Miss Miller's bedroom. “I can't see.”
What was the matter with the boy? thought Miss Miller, vexed again. The barn was certainly light enough, with the moonlight pouring in through the open hayloft shutters. Still on her back, she wedged her shoulders against the barricade of books Pender had erected and began shoving against them, trying to get to the edge of the loft to guide him to the ladder.
A paperback volume struck Peter on the back of his head. Stunned and confused, he tried to shield himself from the shower of books with his good arm as he crawled under the overhang of the loft to safety.
“Are you all right?” she called, hearing him grunt in pain. No answer. Worried that she'd accidentally harmed him, she braced her back and shoulders against the barricade again, drew her legs up, heels against thighs, and pushed backward with all her might.
Pender's original plan was to get the women settled at the house, find the keys to, or hotwire, the Cherokee, shoot the remaining dogs if they gave him any trouble, drive toward town until his cell phone kicked in, then drive back up to Scorned Ridge and await the ambulances or medevac choppers and the Evidence Response Team. There would be no further need for a Hostage Rescue Team, though knowing the bureau, Pender thought they would probably dispatch one anyway, with a video team, just for the image-positive footage.
But the original plan hadn't accounted for the possibility that neither of the two original hostages would allow him out of her sight. To them, Dr. Cogan didn't count-she was just another in a parade of strawberry blonds. So, exhausted though he was, he carried the little Moon woman up the blacktop toward the barn in his arms, while Donna and Irene followed behind, their arms still around each other's waists.
As she hiked behind Pender, sometimes supporting Donna, sometimes being supported by her, Irene couldn't shake the dreamlike feeling that when they got to the barn, Maxwell's body would be gone. It was such an overwhelmingly strange sensation, and made such an impression on her psyche, that when Pender reached the hump in the ridge first, muttered an obscenity, set Dolores on her feet, drew his gun, called to the women to wait for him there, then set off at a trot down the slope to the barn, Irene knew in advance what she'd see when she reached the hump in the ridge herself.
Or rather, what she wouldn't see: Maxwell's body was no longer lying in the doorway where they'd left it, apparently unconscious, only fifteen or twenty minutes earlier. Where it had been, she saw only a pool of blood, black in the moonlight, and Pender slipping sideways into the barn, holding his gun at his chest.
Seconds later he emerged waving, and called to Irene, beckoning her down the hill. She hurried down the sloping blacktop, Donna in her orange blouse and shorts and Dolores in her blanket following behind, now supporting each other.
Pender was waiting with the lantern at the foot of the loft. Miss Miller lay atop a pile of books, her head twisted at an impossible angle. Irene kicked away a leather-bound copy of Dubliners, and several volumes of the Handyman's Encyclopedia, and knelt at her side. She lifted Miss Miller's scarred wrist and felt for a pulse, then looked up at Pender and shook her head.
He nodded, then raised the lantern higher to cast its light on Maxwell, lying on his back in the darkest corner of the barn, under the loft.
She hurried over to him, examined the tourniquet, tightened it one more notch.
“Mommy,” he whimpered, reaching up to stroke her cheek.
She started to ask him his name, then thought better of it. The childish voice, the relaxed jaw, the oval face, the wide eyes, told her all she needed to know.
“Hello, Lyssy,” she said softly.
“Mommy, it hurts.” He looked past her toward Pender, standing above them, holding the lantern. “That man hurted me.”
“He didn't mean to,” said Irene. “He won't hurt you anymore.”
“You promise? Cross your heart and hope to die?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
89
The Bu-chopper came wheeling over Horned Ridge at first light, and touched down in the meadow on Scorned Ridge, discharging an Evidence Response Team complete with cadaversniffing dogs. Pender was waiting for them. He could tell by the way even the ASAC from Portland listened carefully to his every suggestion that all had been forgiven. E. L. Pender had been transformed from outcast to hero agent literally overnight.
Pender understood the responsibilities that came with the new designation: he made sure to wear a blue windbreaker with FBI in yellow letters a foot high to the press conference later that morning and to thank, with a straight face, both the Umpqua and Monterey County sheriff's departments for their cooperation.
Pender also understood that in addition to the responsibilities that came with being a hero agent, there were also perks. Everybody wanted a piece of Dr. Cogan-the FBI, the CHP, three sheriff's departments, and the rapidly assembling news media-but after the press conference, he used his newfound clout to protect her, insisting on interviewing her personally, in her hospital room.
He did decide, however, to leave it to some other poor bastard to inform the families of the victims. That, and the rest of the postinvestigation, would not be his problem-he would be heading back to FBI headquarters, where he would hand over his badge to McDougal and retire as a hero, with a full pension. He would also be handing over his gun. The uglier the Waco investigation got, the more the FBI was determined to play up this lonely public success: the director wanted Pender's SIG Sauer P226 on display in the FBI museum.
